There’s been a lot of hand wringing this week as Democrats read Chicken Little headlines, leading to some nerves about Biden’s prospects this fall. But Senator Claire McCaskill and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri seek to calm the waters and highlight what Biden has going for him beyond his legislative record: laying the foundation for a robust ground game operation. Guy Cecil, former head of the SuperPAC Priorities USA, joins this episode to describe what a sturdy operation looks like on the ground and how to use SuperPAC money to get your message out. We may not like dark money in our elections, but as Claire says, this is the hand we’ve been dealt- so we’ve got to play it.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello, welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Thursday, May 30th. I’m Jennifer Palmieri and I’m here with my co-host Claire McCaskill. Hi, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Hey, Jen. How was your Memorial Day weekend? Did you have fun?
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, it was like such nice weather.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: It was fantastic. Also, my husband’s a very big New York Rangers fan and we watched the Rangers win in the last row of Madison Square Garden and we watched them win and it just like set off a great weekend. It was super fun.
Claire McCaskill: Well, I did nothing but cook and bake and cook and bake for a massive amount of grandchildren at the Lake of the Ozarks. We had a great time. The weather was beautiful. They got to try out the new jet skis. So I was grandmother of the year last weekend because they had jet skis and they were very excited.
Jennifer Palmieri: I did see your grocery store cart filled with some good stuff.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Also trolling the liked Republican senator from Missouri.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, definitely. It was some serious troll of Eric fricking Schmidt saying I never go to a grocery store. I mean, give me a break.
Jennifer Palmieri: If you know one thing about Claire McCaskill, people.
Claire McCaskill: Oh, please.
Jennifer Palmieri: You know, yeah, the woman likes to cook.
Claire McCaskill: I would love to put my grocery store score up against his, by the way.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: So. All right. Team Trump clutching their pearls this week as we await for a verdict in the first ever criminal trial of a former United States president. But so are some Dems breaking into a bit of a cold sweat about Biden’s ability to break through and reach undecided and unengaged voters. So we want to take stock of some of the ways to do that.
I do think it’s important to point out, as Nate Cohen pointed out in “The New York Times” this morning, that he is within one or two points in every state that matters.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: And so this is a very close race. There’s no reason to say it’s all doom and gloom and that he can’t win. He certainly can win.
Jennifer Palmieri: It’s very winnable. Very winnable. I am in Wilmington, Delaware. I was here for something else. I did an event at the University of Delaware last night, but I’m going to go visit the Biden campaign today and been talking to them a lot. And as we discussed last night, we did predict the freak out. We’re like, okay, we’re about five days away from Democrats completely freaking out and that happens, right, “The Politico” story about that hit over the weekend.
And I think what I want people listening to this podcast to know is you are allowed to freak out. You’re allowed to wallow around for a couple of days and think about what it’s going to feel like if Donald Trump wins the election and be despondent about that for the weekend. And then you are not allowed to give up hope for the duration of this race because that is part of what they hope you will do, that you believe that Trump is going to win. And then that is how authoritarian leaders win is by exhausting you and having you give up hope.
And this is a very winnable race. And we’re going to walk through all of that. The Biden plan takes a long time to take effect because they are trying to reach voters that don’t pay attention to the news. That takes months and months and months to do. And the great news is we have someone who can talk to us about actual contact with voters and how the Democrats do it. Guy Cecil, the former head of the Priorities USA Super PAC, is the person to help with that.
He’ll join us in just a bit to lay out how to build and maintain a sturdy ground game, how to marshal the resources the Biden team has to get the message out and excite the unenthused. You also have no permission to be unenthused, people. That’s also not allowed.
Claire McCaskill: OK, before we get to Guy, let’s get to this week’s strategy session, though. If we were in the room, I got to start with this. If I had been in the room, I would say, what are you doing with Robert De Niro in front of the courthouse? That looked desperate and stupid. I don’t understand that. I don’t get it at all. Do you?
Jennifer Palmieri: I do because I’ve been in the room and I know, you know, the poor Biden communications team. Everyone’s like, oh, you all aren’t breaking through. Oh, you’re not moving the polls. Oh, you’re just letting Trump have the whole media landscape because of his trial and he’s just winning people over because every day he’s out there with his supporters and he’s talking about how this whole thing is rigged. That’s just setting in and you’re not doing anything to combat it.
So I get the like, you know what, we’re going to do something. And I don’t think it doesn’t change the trajectory of the summer, but to show a little game and I mean, I love De Niro getting in a fight with some like New Yorker, like there’s loud New Yorkers on Joe Biden’s side, too. And then I do think what they’re doing with the Capitol Police officers that were there on Jan. 6 and going around to other battleground states to, you know, make Jan. 6 an issue, like I think that is smart. I think they just wanted to do something to show like, hey, you know, we’re fighting back too.
Claire McCaskill: Okay, well, they showed that they are in such a panic. They feel like they have to prop people up in front of the courthouse to talk about something that has nothing to do with the courthouse. And frankly, if the media is not covering what they’re doing, they need to do a gut check about what they’re doing instead of going over and glomming on the expectant press around the first criminal trial of a former president of the United States. And the police officers are great. Them going to these states —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: — is important. That’s all good. But I don’t think that strategy made them particularly look strong. And you know, that’s really the thing right now, Jen. If I were in the room, what Trump has going for him, which is hard for me to say that phrase. I mean, it comes out of my mouth and I want to vomit.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: But what he has going for him is the perception of strength —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: — and where Biden is really struggling is people believing he is strong enough to do this for another term. And so everything they do, they should do through the lens of projecting strength.
Jennifer Palmieri: So let’s talk about what we do think. My DNA is to defend communications staff. But what I do think that they should do, and I think they are planning to do this, it’s important to calm people down because people freaking out can actually impact the outcome of this race. So, I mean, I know because I talked to them, I know they’re like, hey, don’t expect the polls to change a lot between now and Labor Day because if you pay attention to the news, you’re probably for Joe Biden. If you don’t, you’re very hard to reach and that is what we are doing now. And that takes months and months and months of work to do.
That’s what you saw the effort yesterday in Philadelphia. The president, the vice president went to West Philly and launched their Black Outreach campaign. That’s not going to be reliant on just Joe Biden. He’s going to win this race from the efforts he does, the vice president, and a whole lot of surrogates, including a whole lot of Black leaders, Black staff. And we’ll talk to Guy about this. You know, Black voters in the battleground states reaching out to their friends.
So they need to explain to everyone, I think, what that plan is, what the message that it’s all laddering up to. And for everyone to understand in terms of looking strong, which I agree with, what they’re doing for the next few weeks is laying down arguments that Biden will hit Trump with when he’s face to face on the debate stage. And that’s why the debate is early, is because they know they have to get that moment where Biden is strong up against Trump, and then that can reframe the race. So, because if people start to think that Trump is really going to win, that like sets a bad dynamic into the electorate that we can’t have happen.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I agree. By the way, if I were in the room, I would have certainly said, great idea, this aggressive push they’re making right now to reach Black voters. Great idea.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And I do think they are thinking it through and doing it in a thoughtful way, which kind of segues into another thing if I were in the room, and that is —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yup.
Claire McCaskill: — what’s going on in Rafah and with the war in Gaza.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I did notice that Black faith leaders, a number of them, are organizing around an effort to point out that really Joe Biden is the more reasonable choice. They are saying, hey, we may not agree with everything Joe Biden’s done around this conflict and support of Israel, but we know he’s a hell of a lot better than Donald Trump on this subject. And that contrast being drawn by Black faith leaders and other Black political leaders is really important.
And, you know, I mean, Nikki Haley was in Israel last week and she wrote on a shell, finish ‘em, on an Israeli shell, finish ‘em, and was absolutely unapologetic about the innocents who had lost their lives in the way this war is being prosecuted. So, that’s the contrast and I think it’s great they’re doing that. What else can he do there? I don’t know a lot. It’s a huge headache.
Jennifer Palmieri: I know.
Claire McCaskill: And it’s just really one of those. It’s a hand he’s been dealt. And we’ll talk about other hands we’ve been dealt later, but this is the hand he’s been dealt on this conflict. And once again, as long as everything he does is seen through a lens of strength, that’s the best he can, I think, do with it in terms of a political issue.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s day to day management, making sure that people understand, framing up what that choice is. We talked a little bit about the low information voter, but there’s two good stories in the “Times” explaining the low information voter who’s getting their news through TikTok, Claire. I know you had something you wanted to say about that.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Well, twice as many pro-Trump posts on TikTok than pro-Biden posts. And if anybody thinks China is not involved in that, they are very naive. China does not want Biden to win. In fact, all the bad guys in the world want Trump to win because he’s their buddy. So that’s the other irony about this, is that people see him as strong and really he couldn’t be weaker because he is sidling up to the worst in the world and making friends with them and bragging about his friendships with them.
But here’s the thing. These low information voters, you’re right. I mean, when you look at some of the stuff that was in the articles about low information —
Jennifer Palmieri: The “Times,” yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, 20 percent of the voters in battlegrounds said that Biden was responsible for ending —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — the constitutional right to abortion. Half the country think the unemployment rate is at a 50-year high when it’s at a 50-year low, that they were divided, evenly divided over who had done more for infrastructure. I mean, this is nuts.
Jennifer Palmieri: They did hear Trump talk a lot about infrastructure week so, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: I mean, seriously, like, I think that’s probably why. And almost a third of people aged 18 to 29 were regularly getting their news from TikTok. So that’s sort of the landscape that they’re dealing with. And I know what the Biden Super PAC is doing on TikTok. They’re doing a lot to try to combat, to have pro-Biden voices. And the campaign is doing a lot digitally to reach these people. It just takes a long time. But there’s one more wild piece about this.
“Times” has another good story about how well Biden is doing with white voters. And it’s so wild, Claire, because what we always hear our whole career, what have we heard? If a state is getting whiter, older and more educated, that is going to benefit Republicans, and that is no longer true.
Right now, Biden is doing relatively well in Wisconsin, where the electorate is older, whiter. And there are a lot of college educated voters there. And that is because when people are paying attention to the news, they are likely to be Biden voters. Those people are also high propensity voters. That is a backstop, but also a reminder that often that looks like a Republican electorate.
Right now, that’s looking like a Democratic electorate. And then the voters, there are voters that right now that are traditionally Democrats that Biden is losing to Trump, Hispanic voters, Black voters. Biden can go out and reach those voters over the course of the next five months and has a plan to do that. And so I think for the way to people to think about this is just because Biden’s plan has not resulted in changing the polls to where we would like them to be, does not mean the plan will not ultimately work.
It is in process. It doesn’t mean that it will work. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying that what they are executing on their right to say, you should not be expecting the polls to be different yet.
Claire McCaskill: There you go.
Jennifer Palmieri: So, you know, if friends, if you are nervous, build a killer ground game. Let’s take a quick break. When we’re back, Guy Cecil, former head of the Progressive Priorities USA Super PAC, joins us to detail how to build and maintain a sturdy ground game. Back with Guy in a moment.
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Claire McCaskill: Welcome back. Speaking of pearl clutching, the only real way to calm nerves at this point and settle a worried campaign, whether the concerns are real or even if they’re a little overblown, is to build a sprawling and robust ground game. No one knows this better than our guest, Guy Cecil. He is the former head of the Progressive Super PAC Priorities USA. Guy grew this into a critical piece of democratic infrastructure, helping take back the House in 2018 and win the presidency in the Senate in 2020. And over his eight-year tenure, the Super PAC raised more than $650 million.
But I remember Guy from way back when, when I was trying to gain election to the United States Senate. And he was tasked by the DSCC to help us with our ground game. Guy Cecil has a lot of experience at the DSCC, which is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the organization that runs all of the efforts on behalf of Democratic U.S. Senate candidates across the country.
And he was a political director for Hillary Clinton. And he has been very involved with the building of a ground game, and most importantly, maybe for us to talk about today, how that has changed in the last decade. I think we all talk about ground game, Jen, but I don’t think most people really understand exactly what it is. So I would like, by the time we finish with Guy today, for people to have a better understanding, what do we mean when we say ground game? So let’s start there. Guy, can you give us a little tutorial about what a ground game actually is comprised of in this day and age with the technology available?
Guy Cecil: Sure. You know, I think it’s interesting because when you see most coverage about campaigns, you get a lot of focus, understandably so, on the candidate. You get a lot of focus on the amount of money raised or the amount of money spent. And there’s a lot of focus on television, right, or digital ads because people see those. But to me, the single most valuable resource any campaign has is a person who is willing to have a conversation with another person that they know, in particular, about an election. Someone that they work with or go to school with or go to synagogue or church with.
Someone who will talk to parents of their kid’s T-ball team. Because we all know that when you have a conversation, a meaningful conversation with someone you know, there is a chance you can convince them to do something. Go cast a vote, mail a ballot, volunteer, or even occasionally change their mind about who they’re going to support. And so, when we think about field, there’s a lot of stuff that has changed, but the single most important thing that hasn’t changed is the value of a person willing to have a conversation.
The second most valuable thing is for someone willing to have a conversation with someone they don’t know. Right, I’m willing to make a phone call, I’m willing to knock on a door, even though we don’t think about it as quote, unquote “field,” the same principle applies. Someone that’s willing to post a TikTok, post something on Snapchat, Facebook, X, Twitter, et cetera. And so, when we think about field, field is just what do we do to make sure we’re maximizing the quality and the quantity of those conversations.
But really, all of the innovation is about how do we do everything we can to equip people with the tools they need to have those conversations. Fundamentally, the job is basically the same. It’s just we have all of these new tools and gadgets and things that we can use to help make that a little bit easier for people.
Claire McCaskill: So what’s a day like, let’s assume, let’s take one of the states where they have a ground game, where they have a field operation already going, and I think they already do in Michigan, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, they do.
Claire McCaskill: Okay, so let’s say you’re running that operation in Michigan. What does your day look like? What are you actually doing?
Guy Cecil: Well, I think there’s two fundamental things that you’re doing. One, you’re trying to build an infrastructure that can reach people, right? So this is, how do I go about making phone calls, sending e-mails, sending text messages, using social media to recruit people to volunteer for the campaign? And then, how do I build an infrastructure that provides them with the tools and resources they need?
So that might mean recruiting a set of volunteers who are willing to organize local events at barbershops or churches. It might mean recruiting people to participate in phone banks, organizing, we used to call them walk packets, but now organizing apps so that people can have the resources and information they need to go knock on a person’s door.
Claire McCaskill: On their phone?
Guy Cecil: Yeah. The second thing is training. I think, you know, Claire, when you were running, we had a lot of focus on numbers, right? You knock on this many doors to talk to this many people. And we did some training. I think one of the big things now is the focus on quality conversation. Going and knocking on somebody’s door and having a 30-second bullshit conversation and handing them a piece of lit may not really have that big of an impact.
Now there’s a lot more emphasis on training, on how we make sure people have the tools they need to have a good quality conversation with someone they know or with a stranger. And then the third piece is a lot of this gets augmented by paid programs, right? We pay canvassers, we pay volunteers to go out and do voter registration programs and other things. So, building infrastructure, recruiting volunteers, providing training, and then augmenting that with paid programming.
And by the way, just since you started with bedwetters, which is like my favorite topic, the number one way to deal with your angst and concern is to make a contribution and to volunteer. And this is where I think, you know, the Biden campaign gets lots of criticism, but they are actually building a robust ground campaign in these states. Something that dwarfs anything that the Trump campaign is putting together.
Jennifer Palmieri: So Guy, people might not understand that the work and the organizing work and the work for volunteers starts now and goes throughout the campaign. Like partly it’s about election day, partly it’s about making phone calls, knocking on doors, trying to do persuasion, right? But you’re also sort of testing this system throughout the remaining five months to make sure that you have a ground game that will deliver on election day. Can you give a little more detail on how that works?
Guy Cecil: Yeah. When people talk about starting campaigns early, a big part of starting early is about all of the infrastructure and testing of what you’re doing. And this is especially important now. I mean, elections aren’t one day, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Guy Cecil: Elections aren’t two weeks. We now have elections that essentially last eight weeks, nine weeks in places.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Guy Cecil: So you just think about you make a decision that strategically you want to cast as many votes early as possible by mail or in person or in drop boxes. So identifying who those people are, reaching out to them in a way that they will see, phone call, door knock, e-mail, social media post, tracking whether or not they requested their ballot, tracking whether they returned their ballot. And if they didn’t return their ballot, following up with them during the early vote election period.
That is a big organizational task. You cannot do that effectively if you are starting in September. And so a lot of what you’re seeing now is not just about quality conversation now. It’s about testing. Do we have the infrastructure we need to identify, recruit, and follow up on all of those people we know we need to get out to vote if we’re going to be successful? And you apply that same sort of strategy and organizational build around, you know, persuading someone to vote. It’s just the purpose is a little bit different.
And so it’s a huge organizational structure. And granted, we’re only, you know, having that size of structure in three to seven states. But we’re talking about millions of contacts with potential voters in order to determine what, how 800,000 of them who will ultimately decide who the next president is.
Claire McCaskill: So I’m a Democrat and I live in Massachusetts or New York —
Guy Cecil: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: — or California or state of Washington. And I am really worried about this election and what you typically have seen and I’ve seen this backfire. I think we saw it backfire with the Susan Collins election in Maine, right? Where people came from other states to knock on doors and the folks in Maine were not happy about all of the out-of-state license plates. So why don’t we talk about what can someone do to be part of this effort now, besides going to the state and volunteering, which is, you know, still helpful, although got to be careful, especially if you’re in a state like Maine, where everybody knows where you’re from when you knock on their door.
Jon Tester wants me to say right now, if you live in Manhattan, do not go to Montana to knock on doors. Do not do it. It is not a good idea. So how can people help in these states that are really going to matter, either in a Senate race or in the all-important presidential race? What do you advise they do?
Guy Cecil: Number one, you can make a contribution early, which I know sounds very basic. Give your five bucks, give your $20, but, you know, so many people give too late for it to matter.
Jennifer Palmieri: It’s really true.
Guy Cecil: Giving a contribution on October 28th because all of your anxiety has built up to a point that you can’t stand it anymore.
Claire McCaskill: That doesn’t help.
Guy Cecil: It’s just a waste. Giving money now is what makes these infrastructures able to be built. So that’s number one. Number two, we all know somebody in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, which I think gets ignored too much, or Georgia. Reach out to those people, have conversations with those people, connect with those people, make phone calls, texts.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Okay, Guy, I want to talk about the relative strength of the Biden campaign versus Trump campaign on ground game. “The Post” did a story maybe two or three weeks ago, where they quoted the Trump campaign talking about they’re having a leaner, more efficient campaign this year and suggesting that the ground game was not going to be as robust as it had been in other years, and they quoted some Republicans in a battleground state saying, no one’s here yet, building an infrastructure.
What’s the deal with their infrastructure? And does it matter as much as ours because, you know, I was talking to a governor recently in a battleground who was like, yeah, there’s no infrastructure here for Trump. They have like one person on the ground, but also they don’t need a ground game the way we do.
Guy Cecil: Yeah. I mean, first of all, when anybody says they have a leaner, meaner ground operation, it’s because, I mean, it is meaner, that is for sure. It’s because they don’t have the resources to do it, right? I mean, we know that the RNC was in pretty dire straits up until really the last month or two, and that the Biden campaign has done a much better job of raising money. So whenever anybody brags about that, it’s just because they don’t have it.
I do think that we do rely on it more, and I think in particular in this election, if you look at most public polling, and frankly, if you look at any private polling, what you’ll find is that on average, a Trump voter is more motivated. They’re more likely to say that they are more likely to vote in this election. And that’s regardless of how you measure it. Measure on a scale of one to 10, most likely to less likely it doesn’t really matter how you measure it.
So we know that we have more work to do to turn out our voters, and that many of our voters are less interested in the election. They tune in later to the election. They happen to be more likely to be younger, for example, which on average —
Jennifer Palmieri: They used to be. I mean, you know, it’s kind of different this year.
Guy Cecil: Yes, that is true. So I do think we rely on it more. The other thing I would just say —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Guy Cecil: — is that the rights infrastructure exists in two ways that ours does not. One, the evangelical white infrastructure, I think, is something that’s real and that we should always be mindful of. And second is, even though we’re not talking about field here, when we look at what’s happening online, all of the incentive structure for online algorithms is geared towards Donald Trump and his message, a more aggressive message, a meaner message, a more divisive message.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Guy Cecil: And so I would just be mindful of the fact that a lot of their quote, unquote “organizing” happens simply because the algorithm rewards Trump’s kind of campaign.
Jennifer Palmieri: Wow.
Guy Cecil: And it does not reward sort of your more typical campaign messaging.
Jennifer Palmieri: I want to say one thing, which is just that to let people know, like, Democrats have a good ground game.
Guy Cecil: Absolutely.
Jennifer Palmieri: Like, you know, proven, Arizona, Nevada, except for the governor’s race, but the Senate race, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and, you know, in ‘20 and ‘22, even Georgia, right? And that infrastructure has not gone anywhere. You got to motivate people, but it’s there.
Guy Cecil: We like shit-talking ourselves and talking down about ourselves. But the reality is that on the ground, not just the official Democratic Party, but a lot of organizations have been working really hard and are actually doing a good job of focusing on local organized campaigns to help turn out the vote. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do and we can’t make improvements, but we need to make sure that those organizations and the Biden campaign have the resources that we need.
Jennifer Palmieri: So, Guy, we’re going to take a quick pause here, but when we’re back, we want to take your temperature on how effectively we are using the system that we have inherited from a horrible Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. We all hate that decision. We hate what it’s done to our democracy and to elections, but it is the reality right now.
And I think people need to realize that if we do not play on that field, we will be defeated. And we want to dive into that and talk about dark money and super PACs and what they’re up to and how we understand how they help in this election cycle. We’ll be back with that in just a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. Our guest, Guy Cecil, is still with us. He’s the former head of the progressive Super PAC Priorities USA. We’ve been talking about how to activate voters on the ground, but Claire and I also want to talk about your expertise and how super PACs work.
Claire McCaskill: As Democrats, we hate dark money. When I was in the Senate, we tried over and over again to bring all of the donors out into the sunlight so everyone could know who was giving to what at a minimum. And frankly, the unlimited part and the corporate part is even worse. But we’ve been dealt this hand and now we have to play it and we need to play it well. So I think you could help us understand what are the main groups out there that are financially contributing to the Biden effort and to, you know, Democrats writ large, both in Congress and in the Senate, to make sure that their messages get out there in a way that can compete with the dark money on the Republican side.
Guy Cecil: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Who’s doing this and how are they doing it?
Guy Cecil: I used to joke. I was one of the few campaign organization chairs that wanted to put itself out of business through campaign finance regulation. But the sure path to losing is unilateral disarmament. So I am in favor of using every tool we have. I think that there’s a few groups that are doing really, really great work. I mean, first, just to say Priorities USA is continuing to do good work around digital communication, online organizing, making sure we’re fighting misinformation and disinformation online, and they’re doing remarkably well.
A Future Forward is another organization focused primarily on television, making sure that we’re getting the word out via TV, especially around drawing a contrast between the Biden and the Trump efforts, the Trump campaigns. Claire, you hit on this. There’s always a lot of focus on who’s funding these campaigns. And by the way, understandably so. The right has been investing in long term infrastructure and they have been doing it in the field area, disinformation, misinformation online, recruiting judges.
The one thing I want to say is how people spend the money is as important as who is funding these operations. And I’ll just give you two points on each side.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Guy Cecil: So number one, I think what we need to understand is that a lot of times when we see quote, unquote “viral things” happening on the right, the seed of that virality is a well-funded messaging operation because the right is interested in telling a story to the American people that is fundamentally wrong, as in a lie and fundamentally wrong, as in unethical and immoral. And a lot of dark money is given to funding messengers and messages that eventually look quote, unquote, “viral.” And so they are spending their money in that way and we need to be mindful of it and we need to respond to it.
Dan Pfeiffer wrote a great story about how TikTok is really screwing us in this election and how their algorithms work and why they’re harming us and people should read it. I think on our side, the thing that we’re missing right now is that a lot of donors were giving to organizations who were organizing on the ground. And for some reason, those organizations are struggling to raise money. People want to go online and give money. I’ll give you two examples. One, BlackPAC.
BlackPAC is doing remarkable work in presidential states and in North Carolina, organizing the black community in these places on the ground, and they’re not getting the resources that they need. The domestic workers, Group Care in Action, another one that’s doing organizing among people that are often ignored. Another organization that could use resources. I could go through a bunch of these, but we should be looking for field organizations that are on the ground doing this work.
But Priorities, Future Forward, two organizations as far as messaging and as far as communicating and paid advertising that are doing good work for Biden.
Claire McCaskill: Is there any communication between all these groups? Like does Future Forward and Priorities, EMILYs List, the environmental groups, labor unions, are they all at a table somewhere? Are they talking to each other?
Guy Cecil: Yeah, I know this is going to surprise you, but actually people on the independent side often actually do talk to one another. You know, it’s pretty shocking. I can tell you, for example, Priorities organizes regular table meetings where people that are spending money online actually work together and coordinate those efforts so that we’re not duplicating efforts and we’re not leaving critical targets online unaddressed. And so that’s something that happens on a regular basis.
Future Forward regularly hosts briefings and meetings connecting these people. You know, we are a diverse party and we are in a diverse ideological space on our side. And so it can be a challenge. There’s no question. But people understand what’s at stake and for the most part have been working really well together.
Claire McCaskill: What about the money? What percentage of the funds going to these organizations are seven figure checks?
Guy Cecil: Well, the percentage of money that’s received is mostly from seven figure checks for sure, right. I mean, if you can give 10 bucks, give to the Biden campaign first and then give to these other organizations like a BlackPAC or a Care in Action, simply because, as you know, Claire, the campaigns can spend, especially in terms of communication, they can spend their dollars more efficiently in terms of what they get charged, for example, by TV station.
But most of these organizations are funded by larger donors. And again, I think that we’ve had some pretty good balance. I mean, Democrats have caught up in some respects. My issue is more with how we’re spending that money. I’m always pretty slow to criticize our side when I’m in public because I think we just deal with so much BS in this front. But I do think the one area where we really need to focus on the independent side is spending more money working with folks online, particularly influencers of all stripes responding to the misinformation and disinformation on the right.
Because we don’t see it a lot, we don’t see what the other side is saying because we’re all in our echo chambers. We don’t really understand how pervasive and terrible these communication channels are on the right and how they slowly move from the far right to the regular all right to the center right and to the center. And you just keep hearing these messages over and over. And so I think that we need more resources focused on how we’re responding and frankly, even pushing the envelope around social media, number one.
And number two, these organizations in these states that we’ve been talking about, they need resources to continue to build and talk to their membership and their ground operations. Those are the two areas I think between now and November, we need to get better at pretty quickly.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I’ve noticed on X that it is reaching an almost viral point that the right is selling the notion that the judge would not allow Trump to testify. I mean, that’s a perfect example.
Guy Cecil: Even better, he made the prosecution go last.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, exactly.
Guy Cecil: I mean, open a civics book.
Claire McCaskill: But the notion that a judge would prohibit someone from testifying in their own defense is so unbelievably stupid that you would believe that. It is ludicrous that that has taken a grip and that it is actually being repeated over and over again that he didn’t testify because the judge wouldn’t let him. Unbelievable.
Guy Cecil: By the way, the danger is not that Trump voters believe this. I mean, there’s danger in that, but they’re already voting for the guy.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Guy Cecil: The danger is most Americans aren’t in a criminal court. They don’t know how the court system works. They don’t know who goes first or second or who’s allowed to testify. The real issue is here. It starts moving again from the far right to the center. That’s when it becomes a fundamental problem for us.
Jennifer Palmieri: What are your views on polling? I’ll tell you one thing. We had the guy who was the head of the NBC decision desk on a couple of months ago, and he said he felt like there was a, you know, because we tried to correct mistakes from the last time, that they were an overestimation of Trump’s vote and sort of reflected in most polls this time around. What’s your view on polling?
Guy Cecil: Can I make one comment? If you added up the polling budgets of every media outlet in the world that polled on the presidential election, it would be less than what the Biden campaign will spend on polling. Okay?
Claire McCaskill: Wow, that’s unbelievable. Say that again. Say that again.
Guy Cecil: Media outlets are not investing millions and millions of dollars into polling operations. So if you added up NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, PBS, pick whatever letters you want, it is less than what the Biden campaign is going to spend on polling and data.
Jennifer Palmieri: This is such a good point.
Guy Cecil: And it’s not to say that these polls are, quote, unquote, “wrong.”
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Guy Cecil: But the first part of polling is who are you asking and what are you asking them? And what is the quality of the contact that you’re having with them? The election is going to be close, people. We barely lost in ‘16, barely won in ‘20 after there was a pandemic. And by the way, what you know what the polls say today? Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are really close and within the margin of error. You know what the polls are going to say on Election Day?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Guy Cecil: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are really close and they’re within the margin of error.
Claire McCaskill: Right, right.
Guy Cecil: So, you know, I don’t think all the polls are terrible. I don’t think all the averages are terrible. I just I think context is important. I read a story that said the Biden campaign, you know, they’re so closed off. They’re not aware. The Biden campaign is aware of the polling people. I’m sorry.
Jennifer Palmieri: So ridiculous. It’s like I’ve been on these campaigns. You’re aware of everything. You live in the same world as everybody else. We know all the terrible things.
Guy Cecil: The race is going to be close. It’s going to be really hard to win. So let’s just, you know, let’s just do the things we can do to help win. Give money, volunteer, donate, post. That’s what we need to do.
Claire McCaskill: Okay, so, Guy, this has been great. So great. I think Guy’s message is pretty simple. Give money now. If you can give, give it now. If you want to help more rather than complain or worry about the polling or say the sky is falling, then get on social media. Talk up why you are for Joe Biden. And most importantly, reach out to people you know in the battleground states and have conversations with them. Even people that you think voted for Trump before that, you know, and you’ve sworn off talking to them ever again.
Now is the time to violate that swear and call them and talk to them and hopefully at least get them to a place that they see that Joe Biden is not the evil monster that the Trump campaign is painting him as. We want to thank you for your time today, Guy. Really great to get your take on how the ground game actually works in this day and age, and that dark money is not always a horrible, evil thing, especially when it is given to groups like BlackPAC and Care in Action that are on the ground trying to organize folks that don’t have a loud enough voice in our system.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thanks so much for listening. If you have a question for us, you can send it to howtowinquestions@nbcuni.com or you can leave us a voicemail at 646-974-4194 and we might answer it on the pod. And remember to subscribe to MSNBC’s How to Win newsletter to get weekly insights on this year’s key races sent straight to your inbox. Visit the link in our show notes to sign up.
Claire McCaskill: This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Katherine Anderson is our audio engineer. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio and Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC.
Jennifer Palmieri: Search for How to Win 2024 wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.